Welcome to ABILITIES BUZZ, a monthly newsletter that keeps you updated on the latest news and trends in the disability and senior markets. This edition begins with a recap of the Spinal Cord Industry Hall of Fame Gala that took place in Washington DC this month. We also include an article on the launch of Disaboom.com followed by an article on the North American One-Armed Golfer Association championships. We report on Dakota’s Dream Foundation, an organizations looking for the cure for Tay-Sachs disease followed by information on RESNA, the Rehabilitation Engineering & Assistive Society of North America who will be hosting a day long workshop at Abilities Expo. And an announcement of the new conference director for Abilities Expo – Sarah Galbraith.

We also invite our readers to visit www.myspace.com/abilitiesexpo to get connected with everyone else in the industry. We look forward to seeing you online.

Stars Shined at the Spinal Cord Injury Hall of Fame Galas
Abilities Expo’s Veronica Gonnello Selected as a new NSCIA Board Member

The National Spinal Cord Injury Association (NSCIA) honored fifteen of the most accomplished and extraordinary members of the spinal cord injury and disease (SCID) community at the third annual SCI Hall of FameTM induction ceremony and gala at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on November 6. Award winning journalist Leon Harris, former CNN co-anchor, current newscaster for ABC7/WJLA-TV and co-host of Capital Sunday served as Master of Ceremonies.

Launched by the National Spinal Cord Injury Association (NSCIA) in 2005, the SCI Hall of Fame was created to recognize excellence and honor individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to quality of life and advancements toward a better future for all individuals with spinal cord injury or disease. Participation in this year's process was strong, with more than 160 nominees nationwide.

This year's inductees and their categories include:

In In addition to the 14 Hall of Fame categories, NSCIA presented its Emerging Leader Award to Chris Skinner, founder of the Chris Skinner Organization, for exceptional leadership qualities in a local or regional capacity toward the improvement of opportunities or quality of life for persons living with SCI. To learn about all of this year's nominees, visit www.spinalcord.org.

NSCIA also awarded the first ever Harley L. Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award to Harley Thomas, NSCIA's immediate past president and long-time disability activist. Thomas passed away unexpectedly in September. The award was accepted by Thomas' wife Nancy Starnes in his honor. In the future, NSCIA will award this honor as appropriate candidates are identified, using Thomas' life of achievement as a high standard.

The ceremony was hosted by NSCIA and was supported by a wide range of sponsors including the Medtronic Foundation, Select Equity Foundation, Acorda Therapeutics, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Craig H. Neilsen Foundation, the United Spinal Association, Motorola, Microsoft Corporation, Abilities Expo, the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, Pfizer, Shepherd Center, Johnson & Johnson/Independence Technologies, New Mobility, Ability Magazine and HDI Publishers.

In addition to the exciting awards program, we are pleased to announce that Veronica Gonnello, show director for Abilities Expo, has been selected as a new board member of the NSCIA. Veronica has been a true champion for the disabled community.

In the October 30 issue of The New York Times, Andrew Adam Newman reported that although 50 million people in the United States have some form of physical or mental disability, they spend money just as easily as others. But there are few efficient ways for advertisers to reach them, and that’s what a new Web site, Disaboom.com, hopes to change.

Disaboom is the brainchild of J. Glen House, who graduated from medical school after becoming a quadriplegic as a result of a skiing accident at 20. The site combines the social-networking features of Web sites like Facebook with information of interest to its constituency: medical news, career advice, dating resources and travel tips.

Disaboom.com went live Oct. 1 and hopes to attract more than a million unique visitors each month by the end of February and to double that over the next year. Mr. House and his investors took the company public in May, listing it on the Over the Counter Bulletin Board securities market.

“I don’t think mainstream advertisers realize the magnitude of the marketplace and how underserved it was,” said Howard Lieber, vice president for sales at Disaboom.

Among some advertisers who have already signed contracts with Disaboom are Netflix, Johnson & Johnson, Avis and Cricket Communications.

“I didn’t have to think real long and hard about it,” said Kathy LaPointe, mobility motoring manager at the Ford Motor Company, about the automaker’s decision to advertise prominently on the site. Ford is highlighting its $1,000 allowance for new car buyers to defray costs of adding adaptive equipment like wheelchair or scooter lifts, steering wheel knobs and pedal extensions.

Click-throughs from the ads to Ford’s Web site “have performed well above the benchmark,” Ms. LaPointe said. “This has been a huge success for us so far.”

To Ms. LaPointe, this is part advertising outlay and part public service.

“We’re in the business to make money and sell vehicles, but it’s also the right thing to do,” she said. “We can’t even measure the societal benefit” of the effort, she added. “We’re trying to make a difference in the world and help people.”

Marketing to people with disabilities may look great on paper, but it is not easy.
“We’re a very difficult group to reach,” said Eric Lipp, founder of the Open Doors Organization, a nonprofit group that consults with companies about the disability market. “People in the marketing world will say, ‘I can reach out to them,’ and I’m just telling you it’s not easy. We’re just spread out over all kinds of walks of life — from different races to different religions to different income levels and education.”

Still, Mr. Lipp, who has spoken with Disaboom representatives and plans to write articles for the site, said he was optimistic about the venture. “We would like to see something like this work,” he said. “You just have to build the right mouse trap.”

Golf's Swinging Singles
North American One-Armed Golfer Association championships

Time Magazine reported in the November 5th issue about Golf’s Swinging Singles. Alan Gentry stood by his ball off the seventh fairway and took a few practice swings. He had no club in his hand. Like any other golfer, he was grooving a perfect shot in his mind before selecting the proper stick. But unlike most, he had no right arm in his socket. So when a car drove by Gentry as he warmed up, four heads whipped back to catch the sight. Did you see that? Was that guy actually warming up with one arm?

The golfers who gathered in Las Vegas in October for the North American One-Armed Golfer Association championships will tell you they're used to the stares. But keep looking, and you'll find some of the most inspiring play on the planet. Golf is frustrating enough with two arms. "Having one arm is difficult for balance, hard for timing and hard for getting the clubhead in the right spot at impact," says Mike Altman, head pro at Stallion Mountain Country Club in Las Vegas, which hosted the one-armed players' tournament. "And these guys do it for 18 holes. It's mind-blowing."

The one-armed golfers will soon step out of obscurity. Just days before next year's Ryder Cup in Louisville, Ky., the North American organization, which Gentry and a group of friends founded in 2000, will square off against Europe's best one-armers in a Cup-style match-play event. This inaugural Fightmaster Cup, named after Louisville resident Don Fightmaster, an Arnold Palmer of the one-armed-golf world, will be an official part of the Ryder Cup festivities.

And it will not be some friendly freakfest. Tensions between the Americans and Brits are running high over the question of whether prostheses and other aids have a role in one-armed golf. So much trash talk has been exchanged that the Fightmaster Cup might prove more compelling than that two-armed Ryder Cup thing.

How do the single-wingers do it? They essentially swing a golf club like the two-handers they call "normies." But without a second hand to guide the club, they find their backswings are often shorter, their follow-throughs a little wilder. "People tend to avoid you at the driving range," says Christian Fisher, whose left arm was cut off in an elevator accident (the limb was reattached but is not functional). Driving the ball is particularly difficult, which makes it all the more amazing that the good players consistently hit 280 yds. and above. "I've lost muscle mass on my left side because I don't have anything there," says Scott Lusk, 34, who has been missing his left arm since a car wreck in 1992. "You have to pull with your hips and legs to make up for it, which takes away the consistency on your swing."

While it's also harder to control pitches and putts with one arm, some players say that on these shorter shots, it's advantageous to single-wing it. "On chips, I see so many guys move their second hand all over the place and get the yips," says Steve Quevillon, a bond trader from Montreal. "We can just let the club do the work." Quevillon, who won the 2006 North American title, is even more unusual: though he has two good arms, his legs were paralyzed in a car accident--so he uses a crutch in his left hand for balance while swinging the club with just his right hand.

For many of the players who have been through horrific accidents, membership in the North American organization or its British-based counterpart, the Society of One-Armed Golfers, is therapeutic. "You don't feel like you're on the outside," says Lusk, whose accident left him very depressed. "You come here, hell, everyone has arms missing. It's rehab as much as anything else."

The Dakota's Dream Fundraiser has been organized by the friends and family of Dakota Bihn to raise money and awareness to combat Tay-Sachs disease. The Bihn family in concert with many other Tay-Sachs families, have founded the tax exempt, 501(c)(3) approved Cure Tay-Sachs Foundation to fund the research that shows promise to treat or cure Tay-Sachs disease. Tay-Sachs disease currently has no treatment, no cure, and is fatal in children 100% of the time.

Dakota is an 8-year old from Olmsted Falls, Ohio that is battling this hereditary, degenerative neurological disease. Dakota underwent a cord blood transplant at Duke Medical Center in January of 2006, but the disease continues to progress.  She is slowly losing her mental and physical capabilities because her body is missing a vital enzyme needed to clear waste from brain cells. One in every 250 people carries this fatal gene mutation that is passed on to a child when two carrier parents pass the gene to their baby. The carrier rates increase to 1 in 27 in the Ashkenazi Jewish, Louisiana Cajun, and French Canadian populations. The Irish American population finds 1 in every 50 people to be carriers of the Tay-Sachs gene.

Dakota and her parents have teamed up with the Tay-Sachs Gene Therapy Consortium to battle this horrible disease. The international consortium of doctors from five highly respected research institutions (Auburn University, Boston College, Cambridge University in the UK, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital) have been developing a therapy that has proven to be highly effective in animal models. The goal in the next three years is to take that research from the laboratory to the bedside for clinical trials. If successful, this therapy may have significant impact on the nearly 44 million people in the United States alone that suffer from degenerative neurological conditions.

It is our goal to raise $1 million in the next 12 months to help these brilliant researchers accomplish their task. We are declaring November Tay-Sachs Awareness month and planning a series of fundraisers to raise as much money as possible on Thanksgiving weekend. Our plans are as follows:
• Have over 1,000 kids going door to door on Saturday, November 24 to
   collect $100 each.
• Collect money outside of stores, malls, and churches on Thanksgiving weekend.
• To support a charity concert and silent auction on Friday, November 23 with all    proceeds to benefit the Cure Tay-Sachs Foundation.
• To collect money outside the Cleveland Browns and Cleveland Cavalier games on    Thanksgiving weekend.

RESNA is an interdisciplinary association of people with a common interest in technology and disability with the purpose to improve the potential of people with disabilities to achieve their goals through the use of technology. They serve that purpose by promoting research, development, education, advocacy and provision of technology; and by supporting the people engaged in these activities. RESNA will offer a one-day pre-conference workshop on Thursday, March 27, 2008 at the Edison New Jersey Convention Center. The Abilities Expo/Metro NY event will open on Friday, March 28th at the same location.

RESNA has been successful in competing for Federal funds to conduct specific projects related to assistive technology. A most notable achievement was receiving an award in 1989 of a three-year, $1.5 million contract from NIDRR to provide technical assistance to State Tech Act Projects in the areas of service delivery, funding, and systems change. In 1992 and in 1995, RESNA won additional support to continue this program. Funded currently are all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Virgin Islands.

RESNA has received additional Federal funding to develop wheelchair testing standards, to assess the manpower and training needs in providing rehabilitation technology through state rehabilitation agencies, and a three-year grant to develop culturally sensitive training materials for assistive technology. Most recently RESNA received a three year grant to provide national guidelines for education of providers and for continuous quality improvement in assistive technology.

A major new activity initiated in 1995 is RESNA's effort to develop a certification program for professionals working as assistive technology service providers. Directed by an autonomous Professional Standards Board, an examination process was developed which provides certification for persons working as Assistive Technology Practitioners and Assistive Technology Suppliers. This effort was supported, in part, by the National Registry of Rehabilitation Technology Suppliers.

Currently, RESNA has over 1,000 members, the bulk of whom are concentrated in the US and Canada. There are 21 Special Interest Groups (SIG's) and seven Professional Specialty Groups (PSG's). For more information visit www.resna.org.

Abilities Expo is proud to announce the appointment of Sarah Galbraith as the new Conference Director of the events. Sarah is a partner at Jensar Associates, a woman owned and operated conference management and communications firm for non-profits, Government and small businesses. Sarah will replace Carmen Jones who had been the Conference Director for the events for the past 4 years.

“We are thrilled to welcome Sarah to the Abilities Expo team and know she will continue to develop an outstanding educational component for the Abilities Expo events and follow in the path that Carmen had set,” said Veronica Gonnello, Show Director, Abilities Expo. “Each year we expand our educational offering for both consumers with a disability and their caretakers as well as professionals in the industry. Sarah welcomes new ideas for conference topics and encourages industry professionals to contact her about speaking opportunities.”

Sarah brings over 18 years of event management and marketing experience to this new position. Sarah has had a CMP designation since 2001, which is held by only 11,000 meeting professionals nationwide and is endorsed by more than 25 industry organizations. She has been involved in planning meetings for people with disabilities since 1992, including 6 of the 7 statewide independent living conferences. Sarah has extensive management experience and will work from her offices in Harrisburg, PA.

The educational curriculum focuses on relevant topics addressing life today for individuals with disabilities, their family and caregivers. The comprehensive workshop programs consist of consumer and professional tracks, with certificates of participation available to students, and education and healthcare professionals. Session topics include children with disabilities, hearing and visual impairments, respite care, feeding, and hyperbaric oxygenation therapy (HBOT).

Hundreds of products and services are showcased at each event, making Abilities Expo the premier event where attendees can see first-hand, the latest products being introduced to this multi- billion market including vans, clothing, lifts, wheelchairs, toys, support services, computers, sports and exercise equipment, daily living aids, personal care products and much more. Each of the Expo’s also offers Kids Day on the Saturday of the event which offers several exciting special events including sports demonstrations such as martial arts, basketball, hockey, football, quad rugby, and wheelchair fencing as well as art, dance and music performances.

About Abilities Expo
Abilities Expo is the one show dedicated to educating and improving the lives of people with disabilities, senior citizens, their families & caregivers, as well as healthcare and education professionals. Upcoming events include Abilities Expo/New York Metro: March 28-30, 2008 at the New Jersey Convention Center, Edison, NJ; Abilities Expo/ Southern California: May 30 – June 1, 2008 at the Anaheim Convention Center, CA; Abilities Expo/Minnesota: September 12-14, 2008 at the Minneapolis Convention Center, MN. For information about any of the Abilities Expo events visit www.abilitiesexpo.com or call 800-385-3085.
Myspace: www.myspace.com/abilitiesexpo.

About Abilities Buzz
Abilities Buzz is sponsored by Questex Media, producers of Abilities Expo. We encourage our readers to submit information on news and articles of interest that can be shared within the industry. Our goal is to keep you abreast of the latest news being reported in the industry to improve the lives of people with disabilities, senior citizens, their families and caregivers – as well as healthcare and education professionals. For complete text on any of the articles or to send story ideas, email amy@riemercommunications.com.

Seeking Speaker Proposals
The Abilities Team is seeking proposals for speakers for its 2008 shows. Key areas of interest include children with disabilities, hearing and visual impairments, respite care, feeding, and hyperbaric oxygenation therapy (HBOT). If you are interested in submitting a proposal, please visit our website www.abilitiesexpo.com, and submit a speakers proposal.